Real Bar Patrons: The Shark

A 61 year old man walks into the bar with a nice but outdated suit, and an authentic hideskin cowboy hat. I offer him a drink but he only asks for water. The gentlemen would like to know where the general manager is. I tell him I can have him paged. There is no appointment set in place so the man says he will wait.

Clayton is his name. I ask if he’s at the hotel for business or pleasure. ‘A little of both’ with a hint in his voice that he knows I’ve heard that one before. He hands me a flyer from out of his jacket. It’s very nicely designed and printed on high quality paper. There’s an overhead angle picture of a shiny silver Jet streaking through orange clouds. On the inside there’s a picture of some Enron type with his legs crossed sitting on a comfortable looking leather seat. The ficticious man is laughing with a glass of champagne in his hand.

I feign extra interest in the flyer and old Clyde goes into his pitch. “This is for the traveler who wants to travel in style and comfort. There’s no check in. No screaming babies. No wait on take off or landing. No deadlines no luggage no restrictions.” The cowboys angle is that he wants me and the others to pass these flyers around to the biggest of the bigwigs, in exchange for some potential kickback. I’m fine with it, but no F’ing way will the GM go for it. But I humor him all the same.

After awhile he starts to feel bad for only drinking water so he orders a cranberry juice. The subject matter takes an unforeseen detour to New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. Apparently, the black people of Katrina need to get their act together and stop pointing fingers. They’re blaming FEMA when they should be blaming themselves. I’m growing more and more noticeably uncomfortable with the discussion at hand. The cowboy eventually picks up on my lack of responsiveness to his rant. He stammers a bit, but then explains that his best friend in the world is a black man, and they go on with these sorts of discussions all the time.

Perhaps to extend an olive branch or maybe just to calm his nerves, Clayton decides to have a scotch after all. Fortunately, he gets off of the previous subject and gets onto the subject of sports. He likes basketball and so do I. He likes Dallas’ chances and fondly reminisces on the days of Pistol Pete. Clayton isn’t a pure athelete, so he was never much into traditional sports. As he tells it, he’s an absolute Marksmen at pool though.

“No I mean it. Way back before all this, how I made my living was playing pool. You’ve heard of hustling. My hustle was that I’d show up at a spot where I knew there was action. I’d be wearing one of those shirts with my name patched on, and I’d smear fresh car oil on my hands, like I just got off my shift at the autobody shop. Everyone thought I was some mark just trying to get my pool fix. They didn’t like it one bit when they figured out what was going on. I’ve had to fight my way out of many a jam.
In 76’ I was playing a guy for a thousand a game. I had him down 4 games so he decides to play be all or nothing. So I beat him. He’s into me for 8 grand and says he wants to play all or nothing again. He didn’t get one shot off in that game. He was good for it though. Asked me if I’d take a check and I’ll be damned if it didn’t clear. But I beat him straight up. The thing with the hustling, it makes people want to come after you. I had a guy come after me in an alley once after a game.
So we get into it for a bit, and I start wailing on him. I beat him right to death. It was me or him. I had to lay low for a real long time after that one. You bet.”

Just then the GM walked by. The cowboy hastily signed the check and walked out of the room. I quit that bar a few weeks later and never saw Clayton again.